EA82 Lifter ticking. TOD, etc. My recent experience.

[MilesFox]

Pac man was a joke in reference to the shape of the o-ring when it fails. I was not suggesting you have bad o-rings, but instead making a silly joke as the opportunity presented itself. I laughed at the picture you posted in response.

[Loyale 2.7 Turbo]

Thank you, now I Understand the "Pac Man" shape of the O-Rings when they fail ...  ...

 

I've been told by Local Friend mechanics, that the Thinner Oil makes my Subie's engine Noisy, because I have "Accostumed" it to the Thicker 20W~50,

 

Others told me that thick oil somehow does Quilting the impact between metallic parts, in a better way than Thinner oils does.

 

Kind Regards.

[TomRhere]

Pac-Man is hiding in your cam towers.

 

What that refers to is the shape of the "O"ring, and that it has turned into a "C"ring basically and ressembles Pac-man's shape.

 

I worked some 25+ years in the Injection Molding field, lots of O-rings on one of those machines. I've seen many o-rings blow in that manner. And for the most part, yes,, they get blown in, not sucked in.

 

On the intake/supply side of the pump, yes,, they do get sucked in. But on the pressure side of the system, they get blown in from system pressure.

 

The o-rings sit in a cavity and do not have an internal support. O-ring seal is made by the squish of the mating surfaces and relies on system pressure to help make the seal from the fluid putting pressure on it in a radial pattern outwards.

 

Heat is one major enemy of o-rings, time is another. Combine the two and problems will arise.

 

As the o-rings age they lose thier flexibility comprimizing the seal. When that happens, system pressure can migrate to the outter side of the o-ring. With no internal support of the o-ring, fluid pressure will push inwards on the oring, causing it to fail.

Doesn't matter if system pressure is 10 PSI or 2,500 PSI or if it's oil, air, water.

 

The reinforced o-ring basically keeps the o-ring from collapsing in on itself if/when the seal is comprimized.

If there was a U-shaped channel vs the flat recess for the o-ring to sit in, seal would be mantained better/longer.

 

Just my .02...

[maestro]

I have had several EA82's and EA81's. All of the EA82's had ticks and a couple of the EA81's had ticks. I used a product called Valve Medic with oil changes and the ticks would disappear. I never delved deeper into the issue. Maybe worth a shot?

[88wacaroo]

Good morning all, Well the T.O.D. issue seems to be never ending EH? I"m lucky I guess-my 90 Loy. starts it"s T.O.D. when it wants it"s oil changed luckly it"s about 26-2700 mi.so thats ok w/me.It does it"s little t.o.d.in the morning at 1st start-it goes up to 1700rpm then I kick it and it goes down to 1100 rpm for the rest of it"s warm up{spfi} I"ve seen posts on here about cold starts at 2500  again i"m lucky I rescued my car from the JY{it was going out to pasture} leaking oil like a sieve 2 emptys in back I thought mtr. was toast but it ran good so I saved it-167k on it when I got it now 191k  resealed it{no cam towers yet} I use 20-50 oil all the time{due to daily Flogging  } But my friends DD 91Loy had T.O.D.from day1 he got it 116k drove it 4yrs.till it threw a rod 243k{not afirm believer in oil changing he is} I put a mtr.in it and he drove it another 3yrs.till the trans died{ring&pin}315k and scrapped it{nothin worth keepin at that point  } But I believe the luck of the draw-some have T.O.D. an some don"t  I saw 1 w/68k w/T.O.D.clean car, owner was fed up,I bought it $500. did lifter swap and sold it {I don"t do auto4xs}!! 

[ivans imports]

did you change the oil pump shaft seal ? the brown one thiss is the one that makes them tick. Preshure erelavent relief preshure erelavent air geting sucked in thru the shaft seal very relavent foamy oil will not let lifters pump up

[idosubaru]

Good morning all, Well the T.O.D. issue seems to be never ending EH?

here is an attempt at a comprehensive thread about TOD, which combines/references this threads information as well.  while you might not care to fix it, probably a helpful read if you're searching/posting here.

 

http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/topic/136547-ea82-er27-ticking-tod-hydraulic-valve-lash-hla-noise-diagnose-and-repair/?hl=ticking

 

Edited February 23, 2013 by grossgary

[Petersubaru]

the first or original motor in my '86 developed the tick and the problem solved by just exchanging the cam tower "O" rings..the noise was loud enough to turn heads on the city street...having replaced the orig. motor with another one,(with a GD FI conversion) I still re-used the original lifters because the lifters in engine #2 were completely varnished solid within the head...between both motors the org. lifters have 300k/mi on them and remain quiet ..every so often I drive to Mexico and southern Texas when the temps are above 100F..the lifters always remain quiet, even when climbing the mountain in Big Bend NP (3000ft in 5 miles)...both fans roaring and the temp gauge remains near steady..for years now I have only used MC 5w/20 and with oil pressure at 35psi@3000rpm I am not to concerned...car has been consistently maintained since new..it's certainly not a flashly car, well worn and still getting the odd person who is amazed that it has not rotted away..(that is for another time)

[scoobiedubie]

You all are aware of how much I dislike the EA82. Mostly I've taken to simply not owning them..... due in some part to the lifter design .

 

My girl likes the EA82 sedan body style - she likes the 4WD D/R..... and in part because I had an old '86 beater sedan that I picked up for $100 when we met years ago.

 

It seems that the 5 speed D/R sedans were mostly made in '85/'86 or something because most of the one's I've seen have been carbed, early models.

 

So I found her one about a year ago - swapped in a Weber. Figured I would do an EJ22 swap on it at some point. But I don't have the time or space or another vehicle ready for her to drive right now to do that.

 

The last few months it's developed a nasty lifter tick - so loud she got pulled over and the cop commented that it sounded very "bad" and was smoking (axle grease on the cat ) and told her he would write her a ticket if he saw her again. She pretty much demanded that I do something about it.

 

Not wanting to spend a bunch of time and money I changed the oil and dumped in a bottle of Rislone and the ticking went away...... for about 500 miles. I repeated the proceedure with the same results - 500 miles it came back. This went on half a dozen times before I decided something more was going to be required..... hated to do it since the timing belts were done not long ago according the documentation so I didn't want to open it up..... but I didn't have much choice.

 

First thing I checked was the oil pump mickey seal - it was at that point that I realized that this had probably been an issue before I bought the car since the seal was new . Carefully checked all the oil pump tollerances - inner/outer rotor diameter and thickness, outer rotor clearance with the block, etc. All perfectly within spec. No problems there and I already knew the pressure reading was excelent.

 

So in utter disgust I figured I was going to have to go deeper. I pulled the cam towers and found the expected (for '86) rubber only tower o-rings that were hard, collapsed, and cracked. Picked up a new set of those. I pulled the lifters (which came right out due to the use of Rislone ), and started checking them. 3 of them were pretty mushy. I tried the sugestion in the book of immersing them in light oil and pumping them - that didn't do anything useful.

 

At that point I figured there was no point in putting the mushy lifters back in since they weren't pumping up for me and the book says to replace them if that's the case.... I went to the junk yard and tore down an EA82 I found there with 112k on it - had a massive water pump failure. Pulled it's lifters and from the lot I got 3 that were pretty good and a couple more that were borderline (book says no more than 0.5mm of play).

 

From the 16 lifters I had on hand I picked the best 4 (all with pretty much no play) to go in the drivers side (because it's the hardest to get back apart) and the next best 4 to go in the passenger side. 3 of the passenger side units have about 1mm of play - but it's what I had and I needed the car on the road.

 

I ordered a new set of pressure relief valve springs from the dealer but they aren't in yet - the two for the banjo bolts in the cam towers and the one in the pump itself. For now I used the ones from the JY engine as they were about 0.5mm longer than the ones from my car.

 

Put it all back together - best set of lifters I could assemble, new cam tower o-rings, new oil pump mickey, ditched the belt covers, and sealed everything up good. And as I hoped the ticking is gone from the driver's side and there is only a very soft tapping from the passenger side.

 

Now I have an extra set of lifters to send to Mizpah for rebuilding. Note that I did dissasemble one and they are NOT dirty inside. They just won't pump up.

 

While we have been telling people for a long time to throw in some MMO or Rislone - I feel that in the majority of cases that I've seen this is really not going to solve the problem for more than a few hundred or a few thousand miles at most. I think ultimately that the seals play only a minor role in the equation and that it's wear in the lifters themselves that cause most of the problems. Replacing the lifters (along with new seals of course) seems to be the only long-term solution that really works.

 

GD

There are a total of 3 oil passages that channel oil between the cylinder head and the camtowers, and those channels lead to the hydraulic lifters.  The subaru O-rings only seal one of those channels.  That other two channels like to be sealed with the same gasket maker as was used to assemble the camtower onto the cylinder head.  I have assembled them both WITHOUT that gasket maker on those two flat surface areas that surround the oil channels, and WITH the gasket maker on those two surfaces.  I did these two different assemblies over a 1 week time period so there were no other variables that came into play.  I had noisy lifters WITHOUT the gasket maker, and quiet lifters WITH the gasket maker on those two flat surface areas.  And the lifters continue to run quiet indefinitely.

[ivans imports]

As captain hook said STOP THE TICKING have fixed so many ticking ea82s it makes me sick to think about it. I hate that sound it means have to tear apart a greasey ea82 oil pump to fix its trashed oil pump shaft seal

[idosubaru]

There are a total of 3 oil passages that channel oil between the cylinder head and the camtowers, and those channels lead to the hydraulic lifters.  The subaru O-rings only seal one of those channels.  That other two channels like to be sealed with the same gasket maker as was used to assemble the camtower onto the cylinder head.  I have assembled them both WITHOUT that gasket maker on those two flat surface areas that surround the oil channels, and WITH the gasket maker on those two surfaces.  I did these two different assemblies over a 1 week time period so there were no other variables that came into play.  I had noisy lifters WITHOUT the gasket maker, and quiet lifters WITH the gasket maker on those two flat surface areas.  And the lifters continue to run quiet indefinitely.

 

XT6's have orings for all 3 channels in there, i always found that interesting. they are the same as the XT channels so you could use XT6 orings for that application...there are 2 orings that are the same and then the 3rd one is elongated.

 

as to ivan imports shaft seal comments - if you've seen that many ticking EA82's, i'm surprised you've never seen a reseal not fix the TOD permanently.

as outlined earlier, many folks have seen plenty of resealed EA/ER engines still tick afer resealing multiple times.  oil pump replacement fixed them all so far that i've seen.

[88wacaroo]

My Loyales TOD is very minimal and only does it at 1st start of the day till oil press.hits so i"m not worried about it..I resealed everything except the cam towers and it"s NOT Leaking and I don"t have the time so i"ll wait till he decides to leak to fix!!{I"m not lookin for work!} I"ve learned if the TOD is BAD I"ll go get new lifters and be done with it { I HATE DOING Things Twice-Waste of MY Time!!} Plus i"m waiting for the HGs to go 190k since I don"t know if they"ve been done or not...   

[ivans imports]

ahh the trick is to strech the cam tower relif valve springs to up the preshure ticking ea82 unexeptabble will not have it no ticking ea82s here

[-tombba-]

ahh the trick is to strech the cam tower relif valve springs to up the preshure ticking ea82 unexeptabble will not have it no ticking ea82s here

Yes that did the trick for me too. If I remember correctly I just put a one washer under the bolt in there and it worked. In another engine I just resealed the oil pump and flushed the engine. I've never had any TOD that could not have been fixed with the oil pump reseal or the cam tower pressure trick and good flush.